Anybody want a peanut?

Posted on August 28, 2013 by remjunky

School has started again. Which is cool,it means I get the house to myself and The Crew. We usually just chill, but today we got into a little more music. We started with perhaps the most slept on rap album of 1994. Digable Planets followed up 1993’s Reachin’ (A New Refutation of Time and Space)‘ with Blowout Comb. Instead of the beatnik feel of Reachin’, Blowout, was a black pride rally or a blaxploitation soundtrack for the 90s. Dial 7 (Axioms of Creamy Spies), is actually a call to rally together to bring about revolution. I think. I do know that the piano is sampled from Tavares‘ Bad Times and adds the menace to the song.

A Love Supreme is… The greatest conceptual record? One of the greatest albums ever? The most important record ever made? Take your pick. It’s one of my favorite albums ever; top 5 in my “Desert” albums. It’s made up of four parts: Acknowledgement (the posted song), Resolution, Pursuance, and Psalms. It was the next step in John Coltrane‘s spiritual journey combined with his progression into free jazz. Psalms is essentially the poem from inside the cover, played by ‘Trane‘s sax. ( I did pay attention in the Jazz History class I took in college!)

When I was little, I couldn’t understand why black men would call themselves Average White Band. My Mom had to explain to me that they actually were white men. She actually had to show me a picture of them. They were that bad. Now go forward some 30 odd years later,and I’m thinking about posting something from them, so I’m doing some research. I come to find out they’re from Scotland! Scotland? Anyway, School Boy Crush is sampled in no less than 90 songs from rappers such as Too Short and Eric B & Rakim, to X-Clan and Brand Nubian (which is really ironic).

Ladies and Gentlemen:

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Dial 7 (Axioms of Creamy Spies) Digable Planets

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A Love Supreme (Part I Acknowledgement) John Coltrane

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School Boy Crush- Average White Band

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You can’t stop with the mushroom shirt.

Posted on August 26, 2013 by remjunky

I haven’t been giving much information about the actual songs I post or information on the artist or why I even chose the particular songs. Most the time the songs are just part of a private listening party for one. Sometimes I’ll hear a song while out or an artist and think that I should post something from them. So today, I’ll try to break down the song and/or artist.

Shrugged Otis is coming here to Cincinnati at Midpoint in September. I learned this while listening to Gregory Porter blow at It’s Commonly Jazz in Eden Park. I had come across Shuggie’s Freedom Flight while digging a few months back. Strawberry Letter 23 is a song that I’m more familiar with as being a Brothers Johnson song. They do a slow funk, trippy twist to the music to go with the acid lyrics. I knew that Shuggie did the song first, but I never heard it until I bought the album. It’s a little slower and more sparse than the Brothers’ version, but it still went with my mood on Sunday.

I know it’s cool to dismiss Michael Jackson for being straight bonkers, and he was bonkers, but there is no denying his music catalog and his influence on pop stars today. (I’m looking you, Timberlake.) My favorite album from him is Off the Wall. This was the first album to showcase his musical genius in the forefront of Pop/ R&B music. He was still Black Michael Jackson at the time, and every song is probably recognizable to casual fans. I Can’t Help It wasn’t as big as some of the other songs, but I like the mellowness of it despite the lust in the song. The song plays like a track out of Stevie Wonder‘s 70s output, which it should, because he wrote it. It also happens to be sampled by the likes of De La Soul, Mary J Blige, Black Sheep and others.

On an alternate Earth, I was married to Helen Folassade Adu, but she divorced me after she went crazy. We would have stayed close, because it’s Sade, man!
I usually save her for when i just want to “sit in my house, stare at the wall and listen to Sade” like Marcus in Boomerang. Turn My Back On You is a little up tempo for her , but her band, also know as Sweetback, is up to the task.

Ladies and Gentlemen:

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Strawberry Letter 23- Shuggie Otis

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I Can’t Help It- Michael Jackson

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Turn My Back n You- Sade

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Dave, I said give me your damn sandwich

Posted on August 23, 2013 by remjunky

I was dreaming today. That’s not anything special, everybody dreams. The amazing thing is that I actually remember the dream. That’s rare for me. Anyway, I was a kid, about 7 or 8 years old, and I was playing Name That Tune with my parents. We would play that kind of like the TV show, only one of us would play a random part of a song from an album and the other two would have to hit a bell and name the song. We played the hip version of the show, so the answer would be I’m So Tired of Being Alone, rather than, If I Knew You Were Coming, I’d Have Baked a Cake.

In the dream, my Mom was playing stuff like Molly and Ain’t Worried ‘Bout Nothin’. Just wild shit that wasn’t out back then. Songs I don’t even like. And my Dad was smoking me and I was drawing up blanks.

Now, what did that dream mean? Should I put more current songs up. Maybe some Gunplay or RiFF RaFF? Maybe it’s a warning to not take that much Benadryl to help me sleep? All I know is this week, I have nothing but quality sounds. No songs about Ecstasy, at least not the white powder kind. Naw, I have nothing for ya… Wait! The dream was about rebooting Name That Tune! Maybe get like Wayne Brady to host it! It has to be music from the 60s to current stuff.

Shit. Google says FremantleMedia have the rights to the show. They helped redo Family Feud. I’m going to work next week after all.

Ladies and Gentlemen: